Arithmetic

"When the Roman Forum fell, freedom fell!" roared Texas' old Tom Connally at his colleagues last week. The Senate was considering a petition to shut off, by invoking cloture, the filibuster that Senator Connally and his Southern friends had carried on for 17 days against the Wagner-Van Nuys Anti-Lynching Bill (TIME, Jan. 24). The cloture motion needed two thirds of the votes to succeed. It failed, 37 votes to 51.

This arithmetic clearly showed the bill's sponsors that, of the 70-odd Senators whose votes had been counted on to pass it, a respectable majority of Democrats were glad for a chance to kill it without openly voting against it. The bill's Republican supporters, who might have been expected to vote for cloture to embarrass the Democrats, decided that since their votes could not swing it they should vote against cloture as a matter of minority principle.

That was exactly what Filibusterer Connally had counted on. Three days later New York's Robert Wagner took the hint, prepared to sidetrack his Anti-Lynching Bill by bringing in the waiting conference report on his Wagner-Steagall Housing Amendment. When that is disposed of, the conference report on the Farm Bill will also be "privileged" over the Anti-Lynching Bill, keeping it off the floor until its sponsors can gracefully withdraw. Thus last week the legislation that the South, by hook, crook, or filibuster, has throttled in Congress for 35 years seemed to be throttled once more.

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